Page 32 of The Night Prince 2

Frightened him, the voice chuckled. He is nothing. An insect.

He is a bully. He is a snob, Declan countered.

Oh, he is worse than that. You’ll see. Just wait, the voice continued to chuckle.

There was a ting of the bell on top of the door to the bookshop as Aquilan emerged. In his arms were no less than five books. His eyes were shining. His cheeks were slightly pink.

“I thought you were getting a gift for Rhalyf,” Vesslan frowned. “Five books? Is he that much of a reader?”

Aquilan flushed, but then proudly explained, “One of them is for Rhalyf. The others are for me.” His eyes flickered towards Declan. “You see, I’m rather romantic, too.”

Cara's Place

Elasha hated Hope. She hated the stringent, chemical smell and the crashing of pots and pans that seemed to happen endlessly. It was also dirty. Trash flattened against the buildings that were… well, made out of trash. The ground was muddy or dusty depending on the weather. Instead of broad avenues, there were serpentine, narrow alleyways that wound through tightly packed shacks that were teetering one on top of the other. It wasn’t safe!

She was convinced that one of the double-decker homes would topple over onto her. This actually had happened more than once, but only Hope’s residents were hurt. At least, Rohannan had no problem with accepting their Menders’ help or the consequences for his rickety enclave here would have been far worse.

And, of course, there were the looks cast her way. They knew she was an Aravae. How could she hide that when most humans looked so coarse, especially in Hope? An elaborate glamour would have been the only way to fit in, but her skills at disguise were rather lacking.

Rhalyf made it look easy to become someone else. She’d half a mind that the face and form he claimed were his weren’t at all. Not that she said that within his hearing or her uncle’s. In fact, the only person that she had confessed her beliefs to were Darcassan and he had narrowed his eyes at her and acted as if she were daft. Not because he didn’t think that Rhalyf was hiding something. Wasn’t everyone? But, because she'd never know one way or the other for certain.

“He’s far beyond your ken, sister,” Darcassan had said. Not with a sneer or even cruelly, but just as a fact. “His magic is too great for us to pierce.”

“Uncle keeps him around for that fact, I suppose?” She’d posed that as a question instead of a statement.

“At first, I think he was as intrigued as anyone by Rhalyf’s skill with the Void. It almost matches his own. But now I think they are bonded for other reasons.”

Darcassan had waved a hand through the air as if those reasons, too, were unknowable. But, again, she wasn’t offended by this. To Darcassan, at least, people wanting to be “friends” seemed strange and unnatural. She was the closest thing to that for him and she was certain that he only put up with her because they had shared a womb. She sometimes wondered if Darcassan would have been different if their mother had lived and not been killed by a Silmon during a hunting trip. But then she reminded herself that this was not likely. Darcassan was who he was.

Regardless, she always felt like a fugitive in Hope, but as she caught sight of the collaged sign spelling out “Cara’s Place” her heart skipped a beat and coming here felt well worth it. She ducked through the plastic sheet that covered the doorway to the establishment. The earthy scent of tea and coffee filled her nostrils. There was a blast of steam as one of the baristas heated milk.

Cara’s Place–named after her owner, Cara Rohannan–was packed as it always was. Mismatched tables and chairs were tucked side by side so that people had to wind their way between them to the front counter where four baristas were kept constantly busy. Unlike the rest of Hope, which seemed garish to Elasha, Cara’s Place was somehow more put together. Things that shouldn’t go together did though Elasha couldn’t quite explain how they did. Maybe it was that the colors in the polka dotted table matched the main colors in the floral one. Nearly every table was filled to bursting and there was a line to get drinks.

It was like an elaborate dance watching the baristas move around one another without spilling even a drop of the hot and cold beverages they served. One of those “dancers” was Cara herself.

Upon seeing her, Cara’s wildly freckled face burst into a warm smile that had Elasha smiling back. Not the awkward half smiles that she usually exchanged with people, but a big, beaming one to match Cara’s own. The ridiculous urge to wave at her shyly came over Elasha, but she stopped herself. That would just draw more unwelcome attention to herself. Besides, Cara knew she was here. The young woman would join her as soon as she could.

Elasha wended her way through the crowd to a small two-person table in the back that was reserved for staff on their breaks. It was also where she and Cara would sit together and talk. As she settled herself behind the wooden table that had a checkerboard design in different woods on the top, she reflected on how she had become friends with Duke Rohannan’s only daughter.

It was a hugely unlikely friendship. Not only because Cara was a Separatist and lived in Hope while Elasha was a member of the royal family and lived in the Eryas Palace, but because of who their fathers were. And to sum that up in one word was: enemies.

She’d met Cara in the very beginning of her father’s appointment as Emissary. Rohannan had been a leader of certain factions of humanity even back then so her father had invited him to a dinner to see what he was all about. Rohannan had brought his daughter with him.

The dinner had gone about as well as expected with Rohannan making demands and her father getting his back up at what he perceived as a mortal’s ungratefulness for Aravae help. After all, the Aravae were fighting and dying to protect humanity. They could have just remained on the Lieran Plane and allowed this all to play out. But they hadn’t. And there was Rohannan complaining about how her father was running things in the midst of a war where people he’d known for millennia were fighting and dying.

But, if she looked at it completely objectively, both men had behaved badly towards each other. Her father had been brittle and aloof while Rohannan had become belligerent and arrogant the longer the dinner had progressed. She’d met Cara’s blue eyes across the table during a particularly egregious exchange and both of them had identical expressions of dismay and alarm on their faces. They’d managed to get both of their fathers to cool off, but that cooling off had turned into an Ice Age between them.

After that, they simply weren’t willing to give each other the benefit of the doubt and so things had continued to go downhill. And that was why she and Cara had started to meet up in an attempt to bridge that divide. They’d hear each other 's positions and then present it in a way that their fathers might listen to. Better coming from them rather than the other side. “Might” being the operative word. But what had worked out rather shockingly well was a friendship between them.

She wasn’t here to talk Separatist-Aravae business, but just to see her friend. Elasha waited patiently as the line of humans finally wound down as each was served a frothy drink. She’d actually begun to relax a little and stared out at the crowd of humans at the tables when Cara swept over with a teapot and two mismatched mugs. One was shaped like a pig–this one was Elasha’s because Cara said it had made her laugh the first time she’d seen it, which was true–and another with an image of Grumpy Cat staring grumpily out of it–this one was Cara’s, because it was her spirit animal. Elasha didn’t believe that at all. Cara was almost always smiling and welcoming. And she was far prettier than Grumpy Cat.

“Take your hood down and stay awhile, Elasha,” Cara laughed as she set the teapot and mugs down on the table. She playfully pushed her hood back.

Elasha caught it and held it there for a moment, but then reluctantly, she pushed it back herself. Her pointed ears with her short hair were even more apparent than ever.

“I just don’t want to draw attention. I know that Aravae aren’t exactly welcome here,” Elasha said as her eyes slid among the other patrons to see how they reacted.

In truth, there were only a few glances and frowns. But most people ignored her. She wasn’t exactly an unknown quantity here. And she was a guest of Duke Rohannan’s daughter so no one could accuse her of skulking around where she wasn’t wanted.

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